And it's a good thing I explicitly said political talk was fine, otherwise someone might think you were calling me an "idiot", right? :D
Heated comments aren't flagged and downvoted, but unpopular ones are. HN just has a very unique profile of what it considers unpopular opinions that aren't the same as American political issues. There are plenty of downvote squads who will mass-flag submissions they don't like. The comments on such submissions will often be even-headed discussions with a wide range of views represented, all the while the sub is going from flagged to vouched over and over.
It's jusy mob mentality of Marz=Communism=(evil or usefull idiot)
Very few people know that Marx himself was puzzled as to why his book became so popular in Russia, and how little his writing has in common with ideology thay followed
The issue here is that this is a fairly benign and interesting story, but this person has used it as an opportunity to air a grievance on something which, to be honest, doesn't seem related other than occurring in roughly the same area. Tangents are fine IMO if they're "if you liked that story, check this...", but if they're just trying to shoe-horn in a rant about some provocative issue that could be crossing the line